Lens Count – Going Down, Down, Down

14Jul

Back in 2012, I bought a whole account from another lensmaster who had almost 200 lenses. That brought my Squidoo account to over 800 lenses which I quickly found crazy-making. Getting the new lenses adjusted the way I wanted was a huge job, so finally I sold off quite a few of them plus some of my own that I’d lost interest in. I gave some away over the years too in my lens giveaway and to entice new Squids to get started.

In the meantime, I kept making lenses on topics, some for quests and some just because they interested me. By February my account was around 600 or so lenses. Then it grew to 666. Is that a bad number??

Recently a few lenses were bumped down to Work in Progress and 1 locked. In my non-giant account (Christmas lenses), 12 suffered locking. Obviously it is worthwhile getting giant status..

As Squidoo more and more discouraged product lenses and frowned on “shopping cart” lenses, I recognized the need to change. Trying to personalize and fatten up so many sales lenses meant I was working nonstop on Squidoo just to keep level. Day after day, new instructions came out to change and adjust lenses. Applying those changes to over 600 pages was a massive chore.

A few days ago I finally saw the light. I’m paring my lens list down considerably. In the last 2 days I’ve deleted 60 lenses. Since I have many personal topics about my family history and lenses that are important to me about library services, the Civil War and my photography, I’m sacrificing many sales pages to protect those.

Recently Squidoo closed some large accounts citing the number of “thin lenses” which is their terminology for sales pages. This purge that I’m doing is to hopefully reach a balance that puts my account less at-risk.

Given the quality of your personal lenses, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I can’t imagine trying to manage that many lenses. I only had one lens locked but that’s because I seldom do sales lenses